2024-11-20 Board Meeting

001e good evening welcome to the rsu5 board of directors meeting it is Wednesday November 20th 202 for we are here in the Durham Community School cafeteria uh we have a full board with the exception of our vacant seat for free Port which we are awaiting uh an appointment from the Council on that uh and we'd also like to welcome our newest uh student rep Moon tesing um and we will we will hear from them shortly in the update from the student rep but just wanted to acknowledge your first meeting welcome and we will get started with the Pledge of Allegiance do I have a motion for consideration and approval of the minutes from the November 6 2024 meeting as presented barring any errors or omissions Cara and uh Danielle thank you all those in favor

002great none opposed adjustments I have none this evening wonderful all right so we will move right on to number six good news and recognition uh report from our student rep so uh a lot has happened uh so far uh winter sports have started um and then the drama theater just finished their performance with the Abba and then student advisory leadership meeting um like had a preparation for like holiday fun and activities and then the active Minds Club hosted a Coco and kindness event last Wednesday and then the um the interact Club is hosting a Thanksgiving food drive and collecting donations and and then um the maker fair was today which gave students like clubs and teachers and staff members a chance to sell their homemade and handmade items today and then uh the L convention

003is on Friday in Waterville uh the eight new student leaders for the class of 2028 class officers and student council members were chosen and then the student leadership is finding more uh people from 10th 11th and 12th grade uh the first uh Community uh newsletter was sent out to share out how we were connecting students and learning with the community uh one of them was students were sent to smcc and Uma in Brunswick on the Brunswick campuses and learned about the different careers and opportunities that they offered and then pumpkin carving for Camp Sunshine annual fundraising festival at L Bean was present sounds like you guys are very busy and between all that there's classes wonderful thank you for that uh so we are up to public comment all right we will continue on uh

004eight I would note that apparently Will's usually under the good news and recognition for things happening at Durham which Jean has strucken from the uh agenda is he oh he'll do it down the bottom okay [Laughter] good luck um so we will move on to the report from the superintendant wasn't picking a will we just moved it all to their goals this year um so uh I just want to give the board and the public an update of where we are in the strategic planning process and remind everyone that um both carara um sir and Kelly has now joined us on that committee uh we've met three time the committee's three times since the beginning of the school year we sent out a request for qu qualifications in September with an October 4 due date

005we received three submissions two applicants were selected to be interviewed by our committee um both of the consultant groups we met with have a tremendous deal of uh great deal of experience doing this comprehensive Works um in other school districts and I'll say our committee unanimously supported great school Partnerships which is headquartered in Portland to facilitate this work um and we do have a great deal of experience uh meeting with uh and doing work with great schools partnership in a variety of of ways uh tomorrow uh cynthy and I are going to meet with the team from Great Schools to solidify the staff's moving forward and I'll say stay tuned because there'll be lots of opportunity for the public to participate in this this really um comprehensive and um uh process that will really lead

006us the next next five years and what we're going to do in our district I'm pleased to announce I probably am stealing some of Eric's Thunder that I but I want to announce our Freeport High School football team was announced as the recipient of the main principal Association scholarship winner for football in class D South this is a sportsmanship sorry and this is a this is a tremendous honor as this award is voted on by other schools in the state the football team will be honored at halftime at the class D State football championship this Saturday at louison high school um and I think sometimes we always look for that gold ball we love gold balls and it's always wonderful to bring the gold balls home but this is indeed an honor for our kids

007it speaks a great deal to their character um and also to our coaches and also to under the direction of Eric as our athletic director so congratulations and I do have to one more time um as mooned I want to publicly acknowledge the cast of mam Mia uh and also Mara Dale our director um I attended with my daughter uh their last performance on Sunday and I did not embarrass her by singing along to all the abatons which is was my time so um that's the end of the report but thank you for the hard work for that do you want to do The Hires and resignations or just note those add on to those too um we've received a resignation from Sally sers free Port High School at Tech um and we've hired a

008new hire for Freeport Middle School attech that is Connor Fox we welcome all them to rsu5 wonderful so uh moving on to number nine on the agenda administrator reports we will start with Kelly for finance oh my I'm I'm usually tall and this is okay um included in your packet this evening um were the expenditures through October 31st 2024 for this fiscal year um at this time I'm happy to report that um the interest Revenue continues to um outperform budgets so we'll probably you'll probably be hearing a little bit about an adjustment to that um a small adjustment because we never know what's going to happen with the economy but um we will probably be looking to adjust that during the next budget cycle to raise that up a little bit after we have like

009two consistent years um and then um on the expenditure side um one thing we have notice is that the um amount of the uh AP warrants that we're processing have have slowed down a little bit now that we're kind of back to school and all that initial back to school purchasing is happening um and we've kind of settled out with the hiring so um things are looking pretty steady I don't have any concerns at this time um and um our office is um well I say our office but my myself and um my bookkeeper are really working hard on the budget this year um we've already begun that process we began early in um July and August and we've been talking about it as an administrative team um since August um at least monthly and

010so we are um deep in it our administrators are currently working on their portion of the budget um and they will be sitting down with Cynthia uh Jean and myself in that first week of December to go over their budget requests so um a lot happening in the central office questions for Kelly so really there's one month where we're not working on budget because basically we're working on budget until we approve it through the budget referendum in June and then you start again for the following year in July we did this year so about 30 days okay great enjoy those 30 days thank you all right so we will move on to uh 9B which is the update from the athletic department and goal review with Eric Hall good evening um I'll start off by

011just kind of giving a run view of what happened during the uh fall with our athletic teams uh we had a lot and we had a busy um fall season um our boys cross country team was Regional Champs and Class B state champions as well and moon is one of the top Runners for our team so he forgot to tell you guys that but he is one of our our Runners so congratulations moon in the team um girls cross country was were Regional Champs uh in the South Region and they were Class B Runners up at the states the following week so that was a great effort by the girls as well um our girls soccer team uh made it to the semifinals with a 93 and2 record and lost a close game to Cape

012in the semi-finals game um great season by the girls soccer team our boys went 310 and one and squeaked into the playoffs uh where they lost a close game to great New Gloucester in the quarterfinals as well um GF won the Western Main Conference Team Championship this year um our field hockey team uh made it all the way to the regional finals uh unfortunately it wasn't their year and they finished up as Runners up in the B south regional uh championship game um chering had a solid numbers again um and as we mentioned football went 5 and3 this year uh lost a home quarterfinal game um close game uh but most importantly was being recognized by the main principales Association as sportsmanship uh for Award winner for class D South which is a a tremendous

013honor of our coaching staff and our players and um how they've been recognized throughout the state by um the rest of the schools here in the state so is a busy uh fall and we lead right into to Winter um so reviewing the goals for last year for 2324 um my first goal was I was coming in new so it was to review and assess and examine our Athletic co-curricular program through an equity lens um and getting a chance to see if if we are Equitable across the board for many things um I put as a goal a survey was to be done but it was on my list in May and before I knew it it was the end of school so it was one of those things where time management wasn't on my

014side um reviewing our practice schedule because fall fall and Springers are really our big busiest time of the year it's if if you've ever gone by uh the high school at that time you see it's everybody's there games are going on so kind of looking at our facilities and how we schedule those spring is a little easier to schedule because everybody has a place tennis has has the courts uh softball has their field baseball Has a Field um track and girls lacrosse can practice at the same time and then when they're done boys lacrosse can get on the field and practice on the turf Fall's a little trickier as we only have really one field to be used um for practices um some barriers that I found is when it comes to first team soccer

015um it's hard to to scheduled them later in the day because they don't have rides back so a lot of times our practice are right after school 2:45 3:00 um on the baseball Outfield to provide them an opportunity um and sometimes the biggest thing that I'm I'm trying to avoid is having them out past 8:30 with practice you know we have an hour and a half practice for field hockey and boys and girls so soccer and then trying to see if we can squeeze in another team at sometimes just doesn't always work out and um Friday Night Football games sometimes leads to an impact with our field because by 4:00 team's arriving it's it's chaotic and trying to squeeze in an hour practice especially when the next day they have a home soccer game and

016they need to use the turf so those are still things that we're working on solutions for next year and I think it's going to be an ongoing thing um when it came to the budget uh this this last year and this year is to look at to ensure that each gender and Sport have the same amount spent and then includes the middle school and DCS as well so that we're able to get the same number of items for one school and the other school same gender opposite gender as well couple things to keep in mind is that there's sometimes uh athletic equipment is a little bit more necessary on one end versus the other such as football is different than ordering for soccer and Lacrosse is different than tennis so those are some things that

017you I take into consideration when I'm budgeting to make sure that we have the same amount and the same needs that are met um with the uniform rotation that was another thing I looked at and that was a mess um some of it was that and I'm a big believer that when you order uniforms you get the home in a away the same time instead of homes one year and then down the road a couple years you get away um away uniforms because what ends up happening is you sometimes get a different material things change year to year numbers get all mixed up so it's a lot of um leg work on in that piece um this past year uh we decided Well I decided to get first team in JV girls and boys new

018soccer uniforms cuz they were a hodg podge of different uh uniforms they weren't matched and it just didn't look like represented free Port so we were able to order um two uh shirts a maroon and a white with a single short to allow them to have that and basically it's the same uniform for both first team and JV um so if they can mix and match um in working with whites who is our vendor for our athletic equipment and uniform selection um there's been a limit of what we can get for uniforms such as Brands um so I reached out to BSN it's a uniform dealer that operates here in the state and throughout the country and I met with uh one of their sales reps and kind of w had me he walked me

019through some scenarios that you know I'm bringing to the board um because I don't know if there's a policy on this or not um so we talked about Adidas brand Nike and Under Armour among other brands for uniforms and when I talked with the the vendor or the sales rep he talked about how Nike is pretty much one of those brands that really operates a a real good um system with high schools um so for example there's two different brands that you get you get a customized or a stock stock is something's already in custo is something that you make um for example if we were to order a customized Nike soccer kit $80 for the shirt $40 for the shorts you're looking at a cost of $120 for each kit however because it's customized

020you get 40% off of that so you're now spending $72 including the screen print involved in that so it kind of lowers your cost and for every uniform that you purchase through Nike they give you a $1,000 Kickback so that conversation that we about being able to have some extra for coaches or things entral that booster sometimes picks up can also go to that product such as maybe jackets or in some cases lowering um bills in other areas so I don't know if there is a policy on that about brands or stuff like that but it was very intriguing to hear that conversation and kind of gave me some thought as when you walk out to the turf we do see it as Joan boo sson Turf and track and there are two Nike swooshes

021on there so it it it's I think it's a good deal um I think it's it's it's something there that they will work with our coaches to make ensure that the uniforms meet spec uh specifications of the national Federation of High School athletics um you know it it would represent our programs and um it also will they also will help us with our Middle School Pro um uniforms as well so it's just not a it's more of a a shot for all of our programs as you know we look to find uniforms that um are going to last cuz I just haven't seen our Speedline uniforms that we have purchased over the years last long and this would help to build a 5-year rot because I believe that the uniforms have at least 5 years

022in them as much as the white uniforms there's just nothing you can do about that but you know looking at and this is not written in stone but this is would be my Five-Year Plan for uniforms would be year one boys and girls soccer boys and girls bball boys and girls tennis year two field hockey boys and girls cross country indoor and outdoor track norc ski year three cheering golf polos Alpine Ski baseball softball year four would be swim boys and girls lacrosse and then year five I would just leave it just football because that's the heavier cost but and those are the the things that I could see if if we went with BSN for for uniforms um the third thing that started is that I want to bring here is Leadership Council which

023is slowly getting off the ground with captains it's it's a Time U management scale trying to make sure that we can get U more meetings than we've had um so there's still that that's a work in progress for me um and uh I'm always looking to find ways to improve uh the meeting times for our student athletes in their leadership um does anybody have any questions before I move on to uh the new goals I I think I I think I can answer the question about the policy I don't believe there is a policy because I think we've had a variety of different brands through the years I do know when we um when we did the track INF field we were very specific in the negotiations with Nike that to make sure we weren't

024required to use Nike uniforms because I know in some places that has been the case and um not that we don't like the Nike uniforms they just to can be more expensive in some scenario so we didn't want to put ourselves in a corner with that so we made sure we weren't required to use Nike I don't believe there is any policy that states we we can't use Nike or wh whomever um so I think you know whatever you find to be the the best overall deal sounds great so y I appreciate that yes I just have a question about what what the cost is I know you mentioned what it is for the Nike with a discount around $72 what is it right now when you purchase something through whites what is the cost

025about depends on the the number um it can run anywhere from $60 for a Jersey to $120 for a jersey that's just a jersey and a lot of times they may not have that Jersey in stock so then what you'd end up getting is is um an offbrand that that can really stand out whereas BSN um um they are the biggest um middle person with Nike so they acquire a lot of the Nike products before Nike even knows so if I needed to get a customade jersey um because it got ripped or whatever the case may be um they could fulfill that in a matter of time the only thing about the program is it's called a booking uh list so if we were to order um something in the spring I'd have to order

026like in December and it's only just because of there's other orders so and that's the same with anything that we do order with um other uniforms as well is that it just is a booking order and it goes through the process you're welcome um and and when you're replacing uniforms is it is the the plan to continue what which is basically replace the varsity and then they hand down to the other teams um does that depend on the sport depends on the sport I think right now we have a lot of uniforms that haven't been replaced so we're we're working towards that goal um I know that working with talking with BSN um they can also find ways to lower some of the cost as well is what the sales rep said so if I

027was to go and say okay we're going to outfit softball for example and we outfitted them all even JV then they could find ways to help us out as well with the cost okay yeah yeah I I will say the the first team boys uniforms last year were almost comical there was I think five different uniforms on the field at one time like some of them were like from the 80s with the collars retro it was I actually thought it was fantastic but I could see why it why it didn't they didn't love it yeah so um and and I definitely can see you know the ones they got this year looked nice they were consistent I mean they're definitely not going to Last 5 Years cuz they're basically a practice jersey um and I

028think they actually even came without numbers origin yesun that was uh that was uh one of those moments where I thought I had the conversation with the sales rep and said yeah I need you to number these and they showed up without numbers and I was like you got to be kidding me I knew we had that conversation so so um no I I appreciate all the hard work you've put in into that and um the the only thing I would say about the um the survey is that um sort of the perceived and I'm not sure if it's actual or just perceived in equity in sports between the feelings of the students that we saw in a lot of the the survey results from the students in the prior years the girls felt like

029there was a perceived difference um so you know if that's something that can still be done to try and access and dig a little deeper into that to find out what they're feeling or or is there ways that we can help um mitigate that I think that's still probably worthy goal at some point absolutely yes all right moving on to goals for this coming year let's see so one goal that goal one is to continue looking at how coaches coach and how coaches communicate to student athletes are we communicating with purpose appropriateness and talking the same language and what I mean by this is coaching is is different it's involved over the last even the last five years in how we direct our message as coaches um we all probably have had a coach in

030our life that nowadays couldn't coach because of how they may act and so the idea is to make sure that our coaches at Freeport High School durm and Freeport Middle School are talking the same language and are representing our student athletes with the best abilities as well as making sure that that when we communicate we're communicating solid and we're not um going off that trail manner speaking um so we have those conversations a lot more now than we did um last year because it's just something that you read about you hear about you hear other schools and stuff like that so I start thinking like well how can I do better to communicate those um values that we want to have here at RSU 5 and so that's a goal of mine is to make

031sure that our preseason coaches meeting when I sit down with the coaches before the season and when they have the we have our parent meeting they're saying the same language they're talking to the same students with the same language um they're not using inappropriateness um they're not using things or or talking in a manner of speak that is not something that we condone the other thing about that is to make sure the supervision of areas such as locker rooms um Team activities bus practice and games make sure that we always have an adult on site um that's something that I've preaching since day one but it's continuation because you know we want to make sure that we have somebody there who's who's an adult and is and is watching our our student athletes because part

032of their job is the supervision of our student athletes so that's something that we're going to continue doing and there's a coaches training through the nfhs which I'll have all my coaches take it's a free course that they can do on their own uh it's an online course and they get a little certificate that kind of shows that they've kind of gone through this so that's something I'll be sending out to my coaches as well to make sure that they understand what is going on and how to talk to our student athletes and and how to um supervise and you know be that role model um the second goal as you know we have a full-time athletic trainer Antonio romano and last year he came in the same time I did and we've had a

033lot of conversations about injuries and prevention of injuries and um other things that kind of come through it so we started talking last year about some of the things that we want to kind of notice and stuff like that and one of the things is we want to look at are are our injuries some of them are preventable some of them are unfortunately probably are not preventable um we have many ways to kind of track a couple things like Antonio uses what is called a healthy roster and what that is is a roster that he kind of has a correspondence between the coaches and the student athletes family to make sure he's meeting all the criteria needs that a doctor might say for rehab or have they checked in with a doctor so it's kind

034of like a communication tool that he uses the other thing that we brought into is called a is the sway concussion management tool and sway is a baseline test that tests cognitive skills that allow our athletic trainer to know um if a student has showing symptoms of a concussion um he cannot diagnose a concussion um as an athletic trainer a doctor can but he can look on to the Baseline and it's kind of a neat little interactive tool that all of our student athletes do coming in as freshmen it's they can do it right on their phone um it's almost like a game where they test cognitive memory skills and all that stuff so then he can use that from an iPad at a game and and look and say right your symptoms kind of

035show this so then he has that tool to pull that student athlete out of competition so they no longer getting in hurt themselves and F further um so when I had him kind of start collecting data on some of our injuries um one of the things was concussions um last year we had a total of 32 concussions 24 of them were in the fall of 2023 which is a lot um and so this year currently we had and this is just for the fall 16 concussions um and that could change with winter and and spring but it it gave us time to start talking about conversation are we are the coaching techniques up to par is our equipment that we use for contact sports do they meet the nfhs criteria are they being reconditioned um

036what are some other things that we can do um and so that opened up a lot of dialogue which will help us to look at how uh um we can have training for the um for our student athletes more in line with what we need to do um because there's sometimes the case of overuse of training there's sometimes the the long um season and then the spr the summer is kind of a Sprint where you you have student athletes who may be doing soccer one night basketball the A and then a club sport or they're involved in club sports as well so there's a lot going on this will help us to kind of understand what are some things we we need to look at for getting our athletes ready as well as talking with

037our coaches about ways that we can improve technique through trainings through coaching clinics through those types of Medias that can help us to improve as a coaching staff um we do a a comprehensive look at reconditioning of gear especially football um helmets have to be done every year helmet is is has a 10year lifespan so a lot of times when I get a print out I get a print out that will show What helmets need to be replaced so that's one thing that I take very seriously um last year was the first year I believe in in a couple years that we actually had the shoulder pads reconditioned and that was a big concern because um it's a liability if something was to happen and it's also inheritance and risk because of the equipment that

038we're lending out so that that was taken care of last year and I have a bunch of God awful smelling gear ready to go coming up soon so we'll get that going um but yeah we're we're we're we're looking at other things such as um field hockey and eventually we'll we'll be looking at our helmets for baseball softball as well and the third goal is um now that I'm in the the thick of things with evaluations it's to create our coaching evaluation tool to capture the important criteria to observe and evaluate our athletic coaches in the district when I did the evaluation last year um I found that it was repeated a lot of the same uh pieces that was in other area so what I have done is reached out to Area Schools about

039their uh coaching evaluation in so it's kind of creating and morphing into something that's going to be um more in line with our with our is5 and high school to make sure that you know I'm I'm getting the feedback and I'm looking at those things that are going to help improve our coaching as well as something that's not going to be repeating the same thing and to really get a lens of of our coaches and how we evaluate them so those are my three goals for the 2425 school year um does anybody have any questions questions for Eric for thank you so much Eric um oh the mics are quiet tonight aren't they um I just had a couple of questions so you said that um last fall there were 24 concussions and this fall

040there were 16 yes okay that's already a decrease so I'm glad to hear that yeah I I don't know if it's a decrease one of the things that I forgot to say was that soccer had taken out the mouth guard rule so there used to be a rule with in soccer that they it was required to wear mouth guards and now they've taken that out so it's recommended so I don't know if that's limited that or not I know it's the main principal association's um Sports Medicine committee uh view that it doesn't help prevent concussions the mouthpiece okay I know yeah interesting okay um well I'm glad to hear that you're focusing on that though because I know it is just so serious and it's very serious concern of mine as you know as a

041parent and I know of all of ours so thank you for doing that um I was wondering on the um and and I'll look forward to seeing what the impact is of of your work um I was wondering on the piece about supporting coaches if you coordinate at all with um Community programs like uh around the kids who are coming up like who are um in sports through Community programs and if you could engage with Peter Wagner at all on support for coaches there too I know it's a little bit different because they're not paid right they're all volunteers but um I think support for our coaches at the elementary level too would oh absolutely um Peter and I in a conversation and a lot of our you know lying a lot of the things

042because you know as I tell our and I and I tell my varsity coaches that they're kind of like CEO of their Sport and it should trickle all the way down to our youth programs because if we're teaching the same skills and the same commonalities then that's their job so we've hired some new coaches and that's the first thing I've told them is you may be the head coach of high school but you're really the CEO of this program that runs through rsu5 I was uh glad to see the um evaluation piece on your goals um I know that's something that's kind of been a challenge over the years like what's a helpful tool are we actually using it so it's great to see that it's on here and um and you're you're looking to

043revise it to kind of meet the needs of what you're what you're um trying to accomplish with them so that was great I I really appreciate seeing that on there and I look forward to hearing how that goes y any other questions for Eric thank you you're welcome thank you all right so Jean just slipped me a note that we're skipping past Durham [Laughter] [Music] um okay great oh you uh display yeah I think I might need a visual here okay if I'm going to keep it to 20 minutes I'm going to need something and some of our technology a little bit but hopefully it will be good wow this Podium is really interesting um it is that's right try oops sorry hold on that was not a technology issue that was a a user

044operator error that's what I wanted Okay so um what I'm going to do is combine the um as Jean said the good news and also just doing through the goal reflection so um just starting off with a couple of pieces about good news um had a great start to the school year and uh everyone settled into some good routines and practices um uh student as you'll see on the either on the way in or on your way out there's a whole ton of uh pster and and s out there that is our annual um food drive that a number of years ago we evolved it into P pasta pass that um the feedback to us from the food pantry was that that was what was most useful for them in terms of supporting families with

045a very predictable meal that could feed a family so uh jmg students and our student council have been coordinating that uh they set a target of 500 items uh which we are almost at that level so we're very confident when meet but families continue to um send that in um then we have partner classes every month between um older students with younger students they meet the same group throughout the year and so November's um partner classes will be next Tuesday which runs in conjunction with the past to past they do that piece together and the theme with our character strong work which I'll talk a bit more about in a moment this this month's theme is gratitude and so it ties in very nicely with things that we're all grateful for uh and fortunate to

046have but also ways of uh expressing gratitude um so that piece is coming along nicely I'd like to give a shout out for recognition to our PTA who have done an amazing job and continue do an amazing job but from the very beginning of school with an ice cream social to Welcome All Families back to school through um supporting teachers with um snacks and um sustenance during conference week with providing resources for students for enrichment activities they uh with volunteering and supporting with bulletin boards or with supporting at the band they made incredible contribution so we're very grateful to members of the PTA um then I'll Circle back we'll end with some good news or that will tie in more with the goal piece so you have copies of the goals I believe so I

047don't need to like project that up you have the paper right there so looking back on last year um which is why I left that slide up there just to talk to in a moment um we had um a couple of goals in there for last year the first one was a ongoing goal uh that had been sort of year three of uh of three where we'd been really looking at the work we were doing around school culture and um specifically we had had some we done surveys with um students and families the year before and staff the student feedback on three particular items of that survey that we use with them had shown a decrease uh that was in DCS of a safe space for open communication or people unseen and valued for who

048they are people at DCS communicate respectfully with each other so that had been a focus of our work uh for one of these goals um kit Harrison our assistant principal here um and I had specifically worked with our seventh and eighth graders um we did it as a whole school um obviously but the work there was to come back to uh core values uh for the school which are honesty empathy respect responsibility which are longstanding core values but we as a whole staff had looked at how do we actually bring those to life what are ways that uh children of whichever age can connect to them but then equally sort of understand their role in contributing to that school culture and school Community um we had uh focused some staff meetings on that some professional

049development work around it and with um seventh and eighth grade advisories Miss Harrison and I uh met with each of our advisories across the these groups looking in in and specifically with them in terms of what is it that um teachers can do to support this what is it that we can do as a school to support this so by teacher I mean their specific teachers by the school I mean across the culture of the school and then what what is their role um in supporting that too as um as students and members of the school community so we had then worked through that uh throughout the year at the end of the year this it's the same survey that went to them the reason I had just pulled this slide up was just to

050be able to speak to it um you'll see that there was um a significant increase again back to where we'd want to see that so whilst we'd set a goal um to uh achieve a a 10% increase with significantly more than that um from the previous school year here and so uh when it came to Safe space we think of on a fourpoint scale with a 1 2 3 4 we think of a one or on two as uh weaker than strong and we think of threes and fours as stronger than weak so when you see that right hand side of that table stronger than weak is um it's the sum of threes and fours um in terms of strengths so we had gone DCS is a safe space for open communication that had increased

051significantly and actually had surpassed the previous uh Baseline data when we looked at all people are scen Valu for who they are that had increased significantly it was similar but not quite the same as the Baseline data remembering these are different students also so perceptions Chang it's not always the same people answering and then um communicate respectfully with each other that one had less of a gain it still had um a significant gain from the previous year and almost back to Baseline you'll see what that one looks like in terms of stronger than weak weaker than strong relative to those other specifics and that was less about teachers in the school it was more about peer-to-peer Communication in sort of middle school grades and so that gave us some feedback towards the work um that

052we have been doing for this year's goal which which I'll speak to in a moment the other goal that we had um had was to uh develop a strategic and sustainable system to provide interventions for social emotional learning um and the focus of being as a result of this work there will be a multi-tier system of support in place for social and emotional learning targets which will support students across the grade levels at DCS that was what we did throughout the year um we established a team uh which we now of uh sort of learning culture team that looks at the school learning culture it consisted of Mrs Harrison myself um Social Work counselor um and that as we look to um we we're looking at what can complement and support our existing practices um

053specifically what will align with also all our work in investment in responsive classroom practices and address the needs that we're looking to address in terms of uh supporting student growth across different grade levels we had looked at some different programs we had specifically looked at sort of um programs that aligned with best practices um and we then met with some different reps across these pieces what we were really looking for was an existing um curriculum model that already had uh robust Tools in place to support multi-tier system of support within this area it's not something we had and um so we went through that work and had um with the um support of you all um also then purchased those materials across the summer and we're using character strong this year um as our selected

054program to support this work part of why we selected character strong is going to lead into the new goal is that there was already established tier 2 practices and resources and one of the key components of any multi-tier system support is that there is a universal screener and so um it we had used some screening tools in the past in this area what was tricky was it didn't always result in action steps whereas the Universal screener associated with this program really does um align within the action steps that exist in that tier 2 curriculum so um that was how that um piece was selected I'm just going to come down to so then um just just a couple of slides these actually come back from uh launch this school year that um one of the

055pieces that is important to know and which we really stressed with our teaching team and we look to internalize as a staff is this overlap that exists as you see there between cognition and emotions so this what we're doing is not a separate aspect to academic learning it's an integral component of children being ready and able to access their learning and if you see this overlap you see in fact the vast majority of the of it is interdependent that these emotive bodily responses relative to high reason and rational thinking is this massive piece right in the middle if children aren't able um to access their learning regardless of all the effort and time we put into best teaching practices or uh great curriculum materials or creative curriculum it's not going to have the impact that

056it could have if in fact we have the balance correct between their sense of uh belonging their comfort level in school and then being able to access the material so that's a big component of why this work exists I just think it's super important to bear in mind these are not Standalone kind of like Feelgood initiatives this is integral to Children's academic growth so um with that in mind um you know some of the although this isn't the specific goal this is a goal for a school-based piece we've been doing a lot of work around the learning brain uh Miss Harrison attended some uh conference this summer and then did uh a lot of reading over the summer in terms of like really digging back into uh the impact of the learning brain and you

057know as you know we also connect with um the uh pieces of John Hat's work for impactful practices and so this notion again just reinforcing as it says the brain seeks connection with other humans as it means to survive in fact social exclusion can make us feel physical pain lead to anxiety and depression and impair our cognitive abilities so this importance of belonging at school and what that means in terms of affiliation status identity and recognizing the role that plays in in in academic growth so um on one second here I think that was supposed to be an inside my head thought [Laughter] sorry i' got just switch between slides for a moment so coming to this year's goal um the um you'll see that we just have one goal this year and um you

058know Gan and I had met and talked about this um it wasn't because I think the length of my presentations um at least I'm hoping it wasn't I'm suspecting it wasn't when she said you one goal's plenty um it was more the sense of sort of where we were at and um we certainly have a lot of work we're doing with staff as I mentioned to you about the learning brain and we have PD throughout the year associated with that and that is really more about how Learning Works not so much how it ties into the emotive side but in fact when we think about what are best practices in teaching that align with what we know about how children um acquire skills and knowledge but the goal that we're focusing on um is to

059develop and Implement as we said year two strategic and sustainable system to provide interventions um and support around social and emotional learning and uh those outcomes continue from what they were the previous year what this year is focused on is now the implementation of the character strong curriculum um ongoing work with staff about what that means across the learning culture in school um it's um support and alignment with our other practices so for example today we're very fortunate to have um Paul White he is a responsive classroom trainer who used to work in District but now works as a consultant for sponsive classroom the district contracts with him for a certain number of PD days across our um across our schools and um was able we have you know some time with him at each

060School Paul was here today um this is actually his second time with us this year and was giving us feedback across what he sees going through the school like an audit if you like of some of our practices he's able to coach into some of those practices and then we had an hour and a half staff meeting this evening which was very much focused on the importance of um sort of our preventive practices as well as of what are some of those reactive practices when preventive aren't necessarily working so still focusing on the focus upon uh the learning culture and its interdependency on the strategies we're using um resp the curriculum for character strong we started the year by ensuring each grade level is teaching this it's being taught by all classroom teachers at the

061middle school level it's being taught by their advisors so it complements morning meeting in our Elementary grades it's taught through advisory in our Middle School grades the reason we wanted to it taught through the classroom teacher is a they are generally primarily responsible for supporting students at tier one in any content and and that it's important that it's this is not seen as like oh that's something guidance do it's important that all students recognize that all adults in the building value this work and have a stake in this work but equally that we then have shared language we can speak into so morning announcements each morning contain a message as part of the character strong work which is great because then throughout the day anybody in the building can talk to any child in the

062building and say remember that message this morning we listen to to about gratitude or the theme from the first few months first two weeks is kindness kickoff then it goes for focus on respect then it's a focus on responsibility now it's gratitude the themes unroll throughout the year so um it happens uh throughout the week and uh across the school the themes when it gets to middle school are actually year-long theme so sixth graders Focus their whole Focus for the year is um belonging and it really takes on this sort of like early adolescent um focus and the importance which we see so often in this like fifth to sixth grade range of where that becomes the all powerful need um for children that sense of belonging so just to sort of um wrap it

063up um oops I'll end with a couple of anecdotes that um I'm actually going to first finish up with these two slides here um I mentioned to how these work so we talk about in great classroom students cooperate and collaborate to reach common goals they describe the environment as friendly and supportive and there are classroom agreements and systems in place to ensure that a respectful environment is maintained in these classrooms students tend to learn more and so that is that piece that ties back in with importance of this work from a academic learning perspective and the impact size for belonging cohesion and friendships is is significant so I'm just use this an example but also tie this back into sort of closing with sort of a couple of examples of good news um so this

064is one of the um tools that gets taught early on in our Elementary grades um from character strong and the focus in K5 it's called purposeful people and they're learning about conflict resolution uh in the in our primary grades it's sort of problem solving and um they hear about some different strategies that they could use and they learn these different strategies you can talk it out breathe it out move it out um and so a couple of examples we've heard so far this year um one was an example of a first grader who had made a poor choice at recess uh after getting frustrated and had come in to see Mrs Harrison and um you know she'd post a question so what was going on and his response was like I got really frustrated and

065I've been using breathe in breathe out as my strategy which to which he modeled like as if he'd run a MTH and [Music] so so slightly demonstrating why perhaps it wasn't working for him um but then sort of reflected that I may have been too frustrated for that strategy to work um but he then did recognize what he would have been a better choice and um when he went to repair the damage um in that process unprompted also was able to say to this other student when you did this it really frustrated me which although he's also fixing it up he's also helping this other student learn from the situation um a different example was from fourth grade is and so this is part of it it's almost like this like oh I got this

066new skill and um uh one of the teachers had shared they were out at recess and uh a fourth grade um student had come across to the teacher and she said they're not including me and um the teacher said huh sounds like a conflict and she's like it does sound like a conflict she say how do you think you want to fix it he said I think I'm going to talk it out out and just ran across and the teacher could s see them chatting and then this other student was involved in the play and they just got on with recess so it's similar to what we see across other learning components that if we give children language and skills and feedback upon their practice they can grow skills it doesn't solve all challenges obviously

067because there's also other developmental factors at play but uh Our Hope and belief is that it will contribute to that success so those are sort of the good news pieces and the goals if there's any questions it's really unfortunate that there you can't go away yet you didn't give us a chance to sit down and ask our questions um that there are no Billboards in Maine because I feel like that should just be on a billboard for everybody right I think we all could learn from that well it's funny you say that Michelle because when we had really looked at that um that previous goal and the language around respectful um and the more we dug into that you know it really was what a common theme was disagreeing respectfully and how to disagree respectfully

068and it is hard to ignore that that is sort of like not just limited to Middle School so it's it was tricky yeah um it one thing that stood out to me in the in the presentation thank you for all that great information um the overlap piece between the emotions and the cognitive processing um you know I think a common I if criticism is the right word but commentary we often hear is schools should be teaching Reading Writing and arithmetic like stay out of social emotional learning that's not your business business um but I think you know being able and and prepared to share that type of information that that is clearly our business because when th when they they overlap so deeply that you can't do one without the other successfully right so I

069I really appreciate that and we might need to steal that slide too sometime in I that was part of our learning also which is like you know time is really precious in school and so it's like we need to be able to justif this legitimately and so I think part of our digging was in that vein and was like and again a big part of what Kate was learning um specifically around sort of brain based research on learning was like this just kept reinforcing it and so yeah questions for Will Kelly yeah I was just curious about the universal screener for tier 2 work what exactly I don't really understand exactly what that means so could you explain a little bit more how so Universal screener means that you are screening everybody and so that's

070what we do in any sort of mtss model that is like a core component so you're like getting Baseline data we do this in Reading we do it in math um and this is when we've started to do it in this in this domain also so you gather Baseline data and from that um that's a relatively quick process where teachers are responding to certain questions for about each of their students y so it's done that part is done by teachers but then we cross reference that so the we cross reference the data we get on from the work with character strong we then cross reference to what we have for like attendance and also what we have for sort of academics and um we look at that to see you know is there correlation between

071these pieces um and then are there students whom being flagged in this but for home attendance and academics are strong which means that in essence they would be hidden in full sight if you like so from that that then identifies for us the team then looks at that data and again we do this we're doing this um at a whole school level I mean in terms of like our team is looking at it for the whole school with our academic work we do this um on 8we Cycles grade level specific where they look at all the data and like look for like how are we responding to those needs so the universal screener was that aspect then from that we look at which students have flagged what patterns exist that may require us to respond

072at the tier one level which means again of for the vast majority um are there some specific children who need a little bit more and in based on what we were looking at for um where those risks may exist is that some thing around attendance is that something around um more sort of um uh intrinsic sort of needs is it something more around the academic pieces and where is that need then being met so we um had a couple of Staff members um attend a specific training on the tier two work for this with character strong and they are sort of like helping us go learn this process um and then we have some students who received direct instruction around the specific areas that were flagged so as a followup um are you finding that

073you're identifying more students with needs using this kind of tool and if you are um are you finding that it's um putting additional responsibilities on say our social workers or guidance or anything like that what do you think Kate I don't I'm gonna ask I know I'm sorry just so for folks that are walking watching at home it the mics don't pick you up from the audience that's why I hecko will from the audience um so I'd say that the data that we're getting from the screener isn't necessarily identifying more students it's just giving us a clearer picture of what we need to do for that student um and the team sat down and looked at the screener data and said okay is this a need best met by school counselors doing a small group

074is this a need best met by instruction on self-regulation um and then there's a small group pulled together for that so I don't think it's really identifying many more students we know our students very well um but it's giving us better information and what our next steps are thank you one of my questions is always um uh we we look and you guys did a lot of work last year to come to this program so is it fair to say that this is a pilot that you will share with your counterparts if it's appropriate I mean yes I mean so you know I think whenever we um whenever a school in the district is trying something the others aren't I think Gan and Cynthia's expectation is that you know we whichever school is doing that

075work then we share that across the other schools in terms of that information um it's not something that we've gone into in depth yet because I think everyone's been getting their own schools up and running and also gives us a chance to get a flavor for like how is this going so whether it's an impact for this year or um or where that timing exists um but um certainly um that does get shared and this you're finding this is dovetailing well with the responsive classroom stuff yes and so that was a big part of why we went with this um responsive classroom actually has a model that they sort of support but when we had looked into that it had um was more of a workbook approach um that we had concerns about the engagement

076for students with it and also we had concerns about the ongoing expense of it and um so when we were looking at this program two lenses we used one was from a social worker who was specifically looking at did it meet this the criteria and standards required to be like robust and and research supported yes Castle certified but um then the other lens we used was actually we had Paul White come work with us and we were keeping him informed of like we're looking at this this is what they're sharing with us do you see this aligning with responsive classroom and then um our team then worked with Paul in the summer to look at what is that crosswalk between the two where is it where can we free up some time so that okay

077this particular practice could replace this we're not doing duplicate um and that is why we continue to having this year so yeah it aligns well and that was definitely a strategic sort of plan p it this is awesome obviously um a huge amount of work and thought goes into it so thank you I just had a quick question about I know um other schools in the district have been focusing on chronic absenteeism and I'm I'm not expecting you to have like all the data or anything obviously that wasn't but I'm just curious is that something that you are also looking at and monitoring and just not maybe part of your goal for the year yes I mean it's um it's a district level goal um so it's I mean we as you get a sense

078right we have multiple goals running simultaneously so definitely over the summer our summer admin Retreat um that was a focus for all administrators and um you know and Jean had definitely brought that to our attention of like what are we doing so a number of the practi IES that are being used across schools in terms of tracking uh information in terms of responding to families who may need that support in terms of messaging about um absences from schools we we we share those practices so we sort of developed a common response to leave requests and things like that so that is also running simultaneously and we have an attendance team that um Kate's also part of okay thank you it thank you so much for this I really enjoy your presentations and uh the work

079that you've all put into the work that uh um that you're doing every day and I also want to Echo what Michelle was saying about the how much I appreciate the um the how you phrase theal work being integral to um being able to access learning just like we we know that kids can't learn as well if they're hungry and you know they're physically unwell because of due to hunger they um also won't be able to learn as well if they are feeling mentally or emotionally unwell because they're not feeling that sense of belonging or value or safety so I think just really appreciate that connection I think we can um continue to do more of that thank you but and I would say that it's as our sort of workers involved with this it

080really is why we just focus on as learning culture because it truly is what it is right it's like we're making sure that the learning culture uh is a strong aspect of our practices along with everything else so that is sort of like the umbrella uh for us okay thank you all right thank you all right so moving on to item 10 on the agenda board comments and committee report reports um so we have board information exchange and agenda requests and then we have two specific committees we're going to hear from tonight um one of the things I think we have talked about in the past around report outs on committees is some we have on the agenda every month to give a report out of the work they're doing but we have a variety

081of other committees that we don't necessarily hear from uh uh regularly so uh one of the one of the things that we're trying to do this year um is one to provide an opportunity for folks that are are doing that good work in those committees to share out with the board uh so tonight we have region 10 and the diversity equity and inclusion committee so um region 10 I believe will be Cheyenne and or Colin that is correct we're tag teaming so if anyone wants to fight us you're fighting us together it's not WWE yet that's true though that that did make me yes good point Cheyenne you have been in you've really been in it with uh region 10 you seem to live there I do do you want to say a little bit

082about what you sp a lot of my time at Region 10 um well some good things we did have a annual an annual dinner and it was just really nice it was obviously it's held once a year and it's for the community members they open it up for the community they open it up for alumni old students and what they did is they had old students cook the dinner for about a hundred people and it was just a beautiful turnout and it's just really nice to see the community come together for that I missed you there Colin we didn't see you yeah I missed being there as well so thank you for pointing that out publicly that I did not attend it's all love Colin I also did not attend but did maybe we'll see

083whether either of us did the um the uh student of the quarter um breakfast no which um uh Phoebe uh read off the the students from Freeport who were um represented there um I gather I'm not totally sure about why this was but it had to take place over two days because there were so many students that needed to be recognized so that seemed very exciting it was a Thursday and a Friday um but I did attend uh I did attend that last year and it was really a wonderful uh opportunity the students in the culinary program cook for um all of the U the students and their parents and and Guardians that come um to that event uh so just wanted to again remind us on that um I think the only other two

084things that I no three things that I wanted to say um was to report that um as folks in our district may remember that in um that last spring um we voted to approve um the school revolving renovation fund um uh which is a uh uh $643,000 um zero interest loan um that uh region 10 um is using to remove and replace the bridge structure um at the uh uh the front of the the front of the school um that process of um the reimbursement process has has been uh going ahead properly and a um the uh contractor has been engaged and that um is on schedule uh the bridge is on schedule to be installed late uh winter early spring which is on schedule which is great um the other thing I just wanted

085to point out is that we are um in region 10 moving into the in as as rsu5 is moving into the budget uh season um and they did want to note that um it's a little their budget process will be a little complicated this year because um there are three sending districts um and um only half of the contracts across all of those districts have are are set currently including ours which they appreciative of that um but that means that it's uncertain exactly um when uh um region 10 will find out what exactly the budgetary impact um uh particularly around salaries um and benefits may be on that process so that um I just wanted to sort of flag that is their certain of what that the impact is going to be on the process

086um we know we like to know kind of early as early as we can in our process but just to say that may be a that's something that they're uncertain of and I bet that uncertainty will impact us as well and the reason that that matters is because uh their what they pay their teachers is an average of the three sending districts right it's a blended sorry yes it's a it's a blended average of the three sending districts and so they know ours and so they're ready to to blend what we have um but they don't know how to blend uh the other things which have not been approved um Shan did you have anything else I had one last thing which is kind of like is like exciting well I was going to talk

087about enrollment so they've already started and opened up the enrollment process for um current students for next school year and then I believe next week they are opening up to the public um and possible oncoming students for the next school year so that's always exciting yeah and just on that we um as of October there were 371 students enrolled in um region 10 which is a um I don't know exactly on what time frame it's a high but it is definitely um High um and there've been sort of basically the normal um percentage of um of uh what we say attrition is that what we say sort of moving out of that moving out of that program um so um the last thing I wanted to share is just it's the it's the part of

088the being part of the region 10 uh board that for me is just sort of the most uh is the most exciting um and no none of you can have uh my position uh you have to learn about it from me uh that um every so often there is an announcement of disposition of equipment and it being a Technical High School there's some really good stuff so as of October this is maybe not still available but we did approve it so they could dispossess it but here were the things that we were getting we are we signed off on the school uh selling to whoever you know showed up with the right amount of cash one two Blackhawk 1.5ton underlift jack stands with a 50 to 80t range uh the part number is 67 395

089number two Renegade manual Parts washer that requires surface servicing number three is a 10 Smith 16ga power Shear which is for cutting metal I gather uh four a Miller GPS 1000 which is has something to do with Welding which also has to do with metal uh five is a Miller distribution panel which I think is linked to the other thing and then six lastly is a safety speed CS series 6400 panel saw so if anyone either on the board or in the audience today or anyone watching at home is interested in any of those products they may still be available uh and the the 800 number for that I don't know what it [Music] is would any of those fit in the bus we're trying to sell could we do like a pack in phoe's

090bus yes I think they would all I think they would all fit in Phoebe's bus we'll take Phoebe's bus to go pick it up sorry Moon you weren't here for that meting you get the you get the next bus Moon uh thank you both for the update I was curious um if there is any update or maybe there's not uh in their Comprehensive High School planning process where they're at um we haven't received an update on that in the last two meetings my recollection from the meeting before that is that it's um effectively sort of still in the water but it's not something that is um being actively actively pursued the other thing I did I did want to note is that um the assistant um director John Styers is retiring um so the they

091will be looking for a new assistant um director uh at Region 10 um and um my understanding is that John taught in uh in the Freeport schools for uh for quite a while um and as I know it's been it's going to be a real loss for uh for region 10 so um we thanked him then I will thank him again now great any other questions about the region 10 update thank you for that uh so we will move to the Dei committee which I think will be Cheyenne again yes all right so yesterday we had our first meeting of the year which is very exciting and it was lovely to see everybody's face um but it was really nice we got to um fortunately we were able to meet with Jen our high school

092principal and what we're going to do is we're going to continue and we're going to try to expand working with the high school leadership team um goodness I believe that was what four meetings ago that we met with them does that sound right and they had a lot to say um and so hopefully maybe we can work with will we can expand out with the other schools and work with them too um as well as let's see so our next meeting is going to be on January 14th and for that meeting we're going to help identify some of like the marginal groups and we're going to try to bring those in and we're going to really expand on that and work on that um and then the most important thing I would say is that

093on sorry um so what we're going to do is we're going to start working with a strategic plan and so we're going to work with Jean and then hopefully some of the community members Cynthia and we're going to really kind of try to put our group in that and really go from there so thank you sounds like a great use of your time yeah all right questions for Cheyenne yeah um so my question is like what type of actions are you doing to like bring change to like the schools the surrounding schools that's a wonderful question and maybe so what we're doing right here is like we're just really trying to work within the schools so we're really trying to work within the high school because the best way to get involved is figuring out

094what is actually happening within our schools and so the best voice for me and you know our counterparts are the students and so really figuring out what's going on in the schools and then going from there and then maybe you know Malik can talk further onto that call in maybe Jean but what you guys see thank you and I think I'll just expand a little um on on the report we had we had um the report from um the high school and what's happening right now and some of the work that the the student leadership team is is doing and some of the work that there is a equity team A Faculty Equity team that is working to identify um barriers for students um I know there's been some work on on microaggressions that has

095happened and we had most of the meeting was hearing from the high school and also what their work is um continuing on and the board of members we did have the student leadership team from the high school come to to do a presentation here and we're going to look to see what are as their work they're beginning to expand to get more students involved in the work that they're doing directly at the high school so it's that's that was what the most of the meeting was for that time and a big part um of the Comm comm's work is as we're getting ready to engage as cheyen mentioned in the strategic planning process is that certainly we want to make sure that that um our students our community members that we make sure that all

096voices are at the table and so we've tasked this um the Dei committee to help us Identify some groups that might be marginalized as we begin to put this plan together for um for sort of the future of the school district so there'll be lots of opportunities for student voice in that um and I know there's there's lots of work being done not just at the high school but at at other our other schools as well by by our students and staff thank you yeah morea thank you for all the updates um is there any student representation currently on the Dei committee I know we've had a issue with that challenge in the in the past so with the students it's going to be really hard because our meetings are at 7 o'clock in the

097morning and so that's going to be the hard part of like especially having like a student voice on the committee but we are trying to pull them in we're trying to you know we're trying to figure out all the details on how that's going to work because it's such an odd timing that we do meet um so we're trying to figure out like how we can like reach out through email you know other forms of communication with them and I will just add I was not at the meeting this week I am on the committee um we did have a student representative for the last couple of years and she graduated last year [Music] I can she had the nerve to go to Smith GE U if I can yeah uh if if I can

098add to the student rep um and Jen did reach out to see if we could find a student rep for that and and it's really tricky it's it's timing is part of it it's hard for kids um and also you know Jen mentioned at our meeting that if it's a student who takes a bus who wants to be then there's an equity issue for the student getting to school uh and what you know we share at the committee level is it's not that that um students don't care or aren't interested but a lot of their work is done at their school level so that's why you see that high school has a really active group um I shared uh you know for example at Mass Landing you know a week ago two weeks ago now

099um their civil rights team which is now 30 plus kids they organize this event for a day of welcoming so where every everyone um with kids coming off the bus so everyone can feel that sense of belonging and that they matter so I think that I wouldn't want anyone to think in our communities that it's it's that students don't care on engage but there a lot of their work is focused there and we'll certainly look for other ways as shy mentioned to to incorporate um kids in the work or get their I think the big thing is get their voices heard yep yeah just um two things just to follow up on Moon's question I think think the first is I think just to say I'm I'm really excited about what what Cheyenne just uh

100shared about the um Dei committee working as part of the strategic planning process because I think really what that could I think uh really help do for the district is really identify um what are some concrete goals that we as a district want to try to achieve over the next five years um and what would the steps uh be needed to to achieve those um so I'm I'm quite excited about that and I think that I'm I'm really glad that um that the DI committee is is is going to taking a a role in that um but I think that's also a place where student voice I think will be will be really important in terms of identifying what is it that students are experiencing and what kind of changes over the next 5 years

101would be helpful the other thing just to to say is that I'm not on the committee um this year but I had was the last couple of years and one thing that we spent um our our sort of big achievement last year um was to create um some working definitions um for diversity Equity inclusion and belonging um based on a on Research uh into um both uh um high schools but also colleges and sort of how they have developed uh language around those terms that can actually become really functional and and pragmatic um and so we spent a lot of time working on that and I know that is now going through a process where the administrators are going to be looking at that and and eventually that will make its way to our um

102to the board and eventually to the website but I think it'll be nice for the students to also um have a look at that and sort of consider it in the through their lens as well yeah I think you know if we look back at the presentation we just saw equipping people with common language can be really helpful on on something like that I think so that's I like I'm glad to hear that work had no idea yeah so thank you for the updates all right are we ready to move on to facilities and operations Kelly our last meeting was on November 6 and it was fairly short and sweet um really had only two parts to it the first was to Glenn um our facilities and operations director gave us an update on the

103proposed capital projects for physical year 26 and the things that really Rose to the top for those projects included a lot of um Life Safety and Security measures things like installing cameras um upgrading external doors um fire safety suppression those sorts of things so those those were a lot of the projects that that are on the roster for next year and then we'll fill in with some of the proposed projects from the energy audit audit uh we also got an update on what is being done with our budget money for this year and Glenn explained that although we had a kind of a set roster of projects that we expected to spend our money on this year we've had a number of of um Capital expenditures that were unexpected um so he explained sort of

104how those um those particular things made it onto the list one of them I think was mentioned last time was a fire suppression system in the new freezer that was installed in the middle school that was not expected and so um some of these projects have pushed off some of the the um expected things that we were planning on into the next year um yeah questions for Kelly thank you it's interesting Finance oh because we didn't Finance just met so it didn't make it on here okay great you're off until next time all right so we will move on to policy um hello everyone um the policy committee met on uh November 4th uh via Zoom um a reminder that uh anyone uh is welcome to join um our uh Zoom uh policy meetings uh

105to watch us uh do our work um uh they would not be allowed to participate but would be allowed to observe and then any questions or thoughts that they had based on that could then be shared with the full board um and we would then take that in consideration uh but we had no guests at the last it was just uh just our committee um we considered um proposing a new policy where the policy committee would be um each individual member of the policy committee would be given cookies made at the Durham uh community school but then we determined that that would just be unjust um not even just within our district but sort of regionally um and we didn't want to sort of perpetuate that kind of uh Injustice so we moved on to

106talking about um three uh policy changes that are required by law these are continuations of what we um discussed at our last meeting and we'll continue to discuss in a moment um these are policies that are impacted by changes to to the title 9 UM Federal um uh uh policy um we looked at AC non-discrimination equal opportunity and affirmative action acab harassment and sexual harassment of employees and we looked at acab BR uh which is employee discrimination harassment and title nonsexual harassment complaint procedures which uh like the procedure that applies to harassment of students um has now been split into two um procedures so we had a discussion of that and in a moment we will discuss it with [Music] you carry on your discussion so um well do you want me to strike three

107I say is this on yes because I've been saying really interesting stuff all all night long I want to make sure it's on um let's keep it on for the moment and we'll discuss that so keep it keep it in there for the moment okay so I'm probably not going to make the motion so we don't have to redo the motion let's talk about it first and then decide if we want we can do that that's allowed yep okay now we're going to have a conversation about these different policies um for second read and then we will move on to talking about the first read policies how does that seem to everybody does that seem pretty fun okay great um so we look at our last meeting we brought for first read um um ACAA

108harassment sexual harassment of students and then um these two new procedures um aca1 and ACA R2 um which have to do with harassment and sexual harassment um uh procedures so those have been split um and we also brought J I.E um a new policy um regarding um called pregnant students which involves pregnant students um I think uh just something that we we did we did talk about um as a committee um and um uh this was something that uh Cynthia Alexander was able to to check with our um with our Council that um procedures um technically do not need to be approved by the board um but we have uh historically had a had a had a protocol of of of bringing procedures um to the board and I made a really smart note about

109what we decided about that that I wanted to share with you and I'm going to share with you now um so basically our practice just going forward um for any procedure is going to be that um that the commit if any procedure uh if any there's any law change or any any sort of change that impacts a a change in procedure this is not policy but a change in procedure the committee will review that um we will then determine as a committee if the changes are substantive enough that we need to then bring them to the the board for uh approval um if not we will as we do with some other policies where there are minor changes uh simply um take a look at them and then not and not bring them for the

110to the full board for approval these procedures obviously are so substantive that of course we would we are bringing them and um and would bring them in the future but I just wanted to make a note of that um anything we want to say about ACA and the two procedures Cynthia or fellow members of the jury before we talk about jie Cynthia is coming I think one of the reasons procedures don't need to be changed that's one of the reasons they are procedures so we can be more Nimble and change them and not have to go through the full two read process if you needed to make changes to procedures so right right so I think it's again I think it was just a little confusing since again there were these were such substantive procedures

111that we sort of wanted to just clarify what is indeed the process on that and it was just again legally we are not obligated to bring them to the board um they can be changed but again as a as a matter of course our procedure as a committee will be if they we will determine we will be the vetting entity for whether or not those procedures need to come to the board or not so the procedure of changing the procedures exactly thank you thank you can I just clarify the where that kind of came from a couple of different policies that we've had in the past um one was on the um waeda testing um the we had just adopted that policy you know maybe a month prior and then the actual score to exit

112a student went from the five which was in the policy to a 4.5 right right afterward and so that next time that we met as a policy committee the Pol we talked about that and we decide that we didn't bring that piece back to the board because it was just a matter of changing that one number with this policy that you're get with these two procedures that you're getting because we have our names in them so you have my name in there and Charlie's name in there as the title one affirmative action coordinators and then you have um a staff member um a confidential uh staff member at each building listed at any given time one of those people there's eight people could change that was really the reason we had that discussion so that

113each time a person changes if they leave they're no longer here um if as we wanted to be able to just make that change and that was really the purpose of having that discussion just to clarify to make it clear that it's not something that's trying to be done you know nefariously Off the Grid it's really just those small changes that um make it up to date instead of taking the whole policy back every single year does that make sense okay um I think uh Colin I gave you um last time we met just a couple of little notes of the the tiny little changes that were caught um because once one of the times I spoke with the uh I don't have them up here with me I didn't bring them up here because

114I gave them to you but um I think in one of the policies the a word age was not in both sections yeah um so I don't know if you wanted to comment on that and then I can just make another comment about pregnant students so I don't know which one you do you want to do that first um I think I think let's just for the moment let's talk about ACAA and um AC a R1 and R2 I think yes there I think the the only changes between when you saw them these last and now um were some things that we caught um such as uh now in um ACAA under harassment of students age would would had not been included and now it is um there was another um where the age the

115in a related piece the Age Discrimination Act of 1975 was not referenced because that is again where that that flows from um those were the those were the primary ones that I had I had noted um Cynthia but otherwise the these uh this policy and these procedures remain as you same yes and they were bolded we didn't like highlight them or anything they're they're the bolded words so that you would notice they will not be bolded when they're approved tonight but they are just bolded so that you could see there's a little bit of a change and that was the law they just it was just an error on their part um because we asked that question and um you know a different question and it was related to the newer policies and he said

116oh yeah I'm glad you called because I have this other little tweak to tell you about so that was the only thing that changed on those two Poli and then there was the verb yes weather the word weather w t h e r is in one of those do you see that bolded in your I don't have them up here with me but instead of no it's offensive is yeah oh and the offensive yes right right there were two changes weather and then the offensive you had caught at the last board meeting it said offense and we changed it to offensive we let him know that and he was happy so I asked for a refund so we might get a little cut back on our right fee and F the record neither of those

117is being used as a verb it was from a noun to an adjective just because we are an educational body uh so MIAA okayed yes sure yes I think we do um so uh between the last meeting and this we got some um we got some feedback from um from outside the board um some questions raised regarding um some of the language in jie um and so we um uh Cynthia was able to chat with um our Council about just some of the some of the basic sort of legal questions um that were sort of raised there so I'm going to let her talk about that but then I think we might come back and have a little bit more of a conversation about that in a moment sure uh so if you look on

118um section A notifications that was the uh the communication they had two uh things highlighted so um the first paragraph that starts when a student and goes all the way to line five in about the middle and ends with programs and activities that is a that's required and must stay as is the the sentence that was uh in question in the communication the employee should also and we talked about this notify the title 9 coordinator of the pregnancy related conditions up to that point there's a little bit of wiggle room and I believe that we did talk about that at the board meeting because you said you know Cynthia you're very approachable but right do you remember that okay so I knew we had talked about it and so um then we received a communication

119I think Monday Monday and um so I spoke with the lawyer um one of the um things that was said in the communication was that it was in violation I want to be clear clarify that for you it is not in violation because this is not under medical this is under educational jurisdiction and we follow furpa laws and that overrides the educational process so having this in here I'm not suggesting we keep it or not but having it in here is um not a violation it's not counter to Hippa uh no because furpa overrides that because we're using it as an educational justification so and that and that that that comes up more you know other in other places um so it is recommended language as a good practice it is it does not have

120to stay exactly as is but I just wanted to let you know that um it's not a violation because it's governed by furpa um as an educational justification so consent is not required I just want to say that right so just so that the board understands that that that that I understand why was communicated that way and under that other lens you know in a medical field is different than in the educational field and then the okay and then the second um piece of that communication was uh section c and um it it's probably not clearly written but I think it was misread so it really does say that if a student is in another setting for some sort of privacy um it's their it's voluntary for them and I think the way it's read

121here says the student must voluntarily agree right so it's a it's an interpretation of the way it's written and we can um he offered some a little tweak in the language that we could clean that up so it's clear um when we were at the policy committee meeting it didn't stand out we understood it as what it was intended and I think it was just the way it the way it reads I can see where somebody might think it's mean something different but it doesn't so I just wanted to point those two things out before you continue on with whether we um thank you thank you for the followup um yeah thanks so much Cynthia I mean I think that the just from a um so as I communicated to the board in a in

122in an email after we received that communication that um before we got that information from the board I think the some questions were raised around that around particularly the um well was really run both of those things it was the privacy and then it was also the voluntarily right it was really those two two questions um my uh my perspective at the time that I uh sent that note was that um it may be wise for um the uh policy committee to take just a little bit more time to like fully understand the the the complexity of that I think the information that cynth has um been able to gather I think um I think responds uh really effectively I think to the letter of what the of what the the issue was that was

123raised um there are I think some still some questions that I have and I can kind of I can share those in a moment but um one just to sort of just to say um and as always is a is an opp is a is a possibility is that we can decide to not um to not pass jie and to send it back to the uh policy committee um to force some just further thought and consideration um if we as a board decide that that is uh what is best to do I think we're all waiting for your comments okay so based on this sort of this relates to again this is my non-legal um uh research regarding what Cynthia shared in terms of the furpa um the the furpa the furpa regulation um um

124my understanding is that furpa um has very particular um rules regarding the sharing of educational records um and un my understanding is that under furpa um two things are not considered educational records under furpa one is personal observations by a staff member and another is unrecorded conversations um so my understanding of that again this is not I'm not saying this from a legal perspective just but I wanted to have some sort of context for this is that um if a student has not communicated um that they're pregnant to the school and therefore it's not part of their educational record um and and an observation is made by a staff member about about that student's pregnancy um that their that sort of medical information the S the fact of their pregnancy is not is not covered

125is not considered private um similarly if that student has not communicated that information and it is not in the record if it is shared with um a staff member that communication is not is not considered private um again this is my when I received the information from Cynthia to try to wrap my head around that it's it's has to do with at least in terms of how I was able to understand it that difference between educational record and then information that is gathered outside of that by a member of uh the staff um so all that to say that was my way of sort of wrapping my head around it I would like honestly to have a little bit more time to think that through and really understand um really what is the language um

126in furpa on that what is really Ina like is that actually how uh in terms of those sort of points around personal observation or unrecorded conversations is that indeed just is that how things are practiced currently um in the school and that's not to say that they shouldn't be but just to have an understanding if that if that is how that works um so that I just wanted to add that information to the conversation um so if we send this back to committee I mean are there any changes that you can even make even if you consider all those things um you get the consent of the student before you shared it with the title 9 person I mean that is where the requirement I think clarifi I think I think I guess uh I

127guess the way I would think about it is that I would like to understand a little bit better sort of from like a a slightly higher view just like what um uh what are this what are staff members and faculty required to to do what are they able to do and what must they not do um in terms of this in terms of this issue so that then I think we can just make clear in our policy but I think also then probably make uh clear to the student body who I imagine is not reading the jiee pregnant students uh policy um before they would consider perhaps sharing this information right like how we would actually communicate um the fact if if indeed um it is not a protected conversation how is it that a

128young person would know that um and how would they then be how would they be informed um uh to then make that decision for themselves whether or not they do want to share that information does that Mak sense so I'm not saying we have any ability to change the law I'm just saying we have some ability to understand what is our practice and how we are articulating our our um how we are conforming with law and then make a decision and perhaps asking for uh Jean's input or other administrators input for how we communicate that to the students so my understanding of the part we had to add for the law the law requires us to share the title 9 coordinators contact information so they could reach out for additional support if they so chose

129right and period and then our policy says the employee should also notify that you know basically close that Loop right let the title 9 coordinator know um that they have shared this information um so that's the question right and when I read it it doesn't say the employee must right it says should but that is pretty gray and if I'm an employee and I read that it says I should do that right um I I think I'm going to go back to my concern the first time we talked about this and I think it might um to your point of sharing the information with the student body about if you tell us this this is what we're going to do with it because that's what our policy says we're going to do with it I

130think it might discourage people from sharing it um so if our goal is to make sure that they have access to resources if they want it then following the letter of the law does that I can understand the rationale behind like yeah but we'd love to be able to back that up and reach out to them and share information right um but I'm just afraid it's it's going to backfire and it's going to prevent people from even talking to a a what who they might consider a safe person at the school sorry Belle just to clarify what would backfire I'm I'm not disagreeing I'm just trying to follow I'm saying it would backfire in that students would choose not to tell anybody and if we include that language in the if we include that non-required

131language in the policy that could backfire I think so okay I I think you might find people who would be like well I would talk to this person to look for help but if I know that they then have to go to tell someone else I might not tell them that makes total sense to me but I I suppose just the another possibility would be that we're by omitting that information by like omitting that recommendation we're in effect uh disguising the fact that it might happen but why would it happen if we don't have it in there um I mean or put something in there that says you know with consent of the student Andor parent Guardian the employee should then you know so put the consent piece in there so that that's implied so

132it says if I have your consent then the employee would share it if I don't I will not that makes sense also yeah Danielle and Cara and candy please jump in uh if you I agree because I think if you if we take it out and the student does share it with the teacher and the teacher does go tell synthony CN Cynthia what risk do we then put to the teacher who did something that maybe they just thought was right cuz they didn't read the policy either or they weren't very clear on the policy right so if we take it out I feel like the teacher could be in danger if we leave it in I feel like the kids might not share it with the teacher right I mean do you see I like

133the consent I like the idea of saying can can we share this to help you right we're not doing this to like yeah we're here to help to make sure you're getting all the correct resources so at a very minim minimum we provide the contact information because that's what the law requires and if they're willing then we'll help facilitate a [Music] conversation yeah that makes sense to me um I'm I'm curious if um if the attorneys had any idea why they didn't put that consent piece in did they me this this board member does not know the that the answer to that information I'll just look at Cynthia just all I think okay but yeah and I think I think just again to I guess again to clarify my like my limited understanding is it's

134not that it it's not that the um there's anything in furpa that that um there's no there's something uh no offense Cynthia there's nothing special about Cynthia like as the title 9 coordinator that like makes that okay to share it with her like basically furpa as as far as I understand it doesn't cover if if I'm told I can tell anyone I want about that what if you're the nurse are they covered by different rules because of if if if the discussion is not specifically Allowed by furpa and protected by furpa but it is with a healthc care professional a nurse in our schools I don't know the answer to that but I would imagine it does but I that's above our pay grade so then so then they're constraint like the way it's written

135now we could put our nurses potentially in a tough spot if they are required by Hippa not to share but we say that they shall share then I mean without the consent piece I think that could be a challenge or maybe I'm right I mean I think again just to again to go up to zoom up for a moment I think like I'm happy to continue having this conversation with y'all about this as a board because it's really yall are really smart it's really helpful to have this conversation but also this is something if if you would like us to go and look into this a little bit more to understand some of that Nuance that is something we can do as part of our policy committee process so just to say this not to

136shut down conversation because I know that Cara also had her hand up but just to say that is one of our options to say like this is complicated can you please go figure it out right I I think it would be helpful to talk to the nurses actually and hear their their thoughts on this as they might be in the the most common people who would be in this situation in a conflict yeah yeah and I think that and to better understand that uh Hippa versus verpa piece I think would be important to um to do I know that there's I know that there's um a desire to to get this approved I think that we may have missed a step in the original policy committee meeting and I'd like to see us revisit that

137yeah um yeah I think that's a great idea and sort of regardless of um where we come down on this it raised the question to me when we're looking at policies because I know one of the things the policy committee does is it reaches out to stakeholders right if we're changing the policy on whatever we reach out to the people who might be impacted by that policy it raised the question to me that as the district physician um should we be running policies that relate to medical things by I mean why do we have a district physician this seems like a perfect use of that that position um so I was curious if that had happened or if they had just stumbled across the policy in the reading our minutes and and reached out it

138I mean honestly it's the latter and I would say that that's a that's a um that's a blind spot of ours I think we have we we do have a a practice of um um of inviting as you say of inviting stakeholders but I would say that that's um I think that process should be Revisited and refined a little bit just to make sure we really are thinking that through just as a matter of course um just a matter of course saying okay there's a new policy coming up or something like who are the stakeholders is there somebody um that's just not an sort of explicit step that we have had so I think we can own that and um and make that change Kelly yeah I just really like this consent piece for this

139last p uh last sentence of the notifications just because even if there is a HIPPA issue with the nurses for example um having consent would sort of cover those bases especially if it was some kind of written consent that we require and I just really like the idea of of um giving our students more agency and that's something we always talk about we want our students to have as much agency as possible over their education and so um make allowing them that ability to consent um or not right is just I think it aligns really well with our values as a RSU okay so what I'm hearing is that we're going to send this back to the policy committee um to sort of dig into those details a little bit more but sounds like the

140general consensus of the board assuming you guys don't find anything that would be you know lead you to think contrary that this is a good idea would be to add a consent part of that last sentence and notification is that a fair task for yeah Mora yeah I totally agree with everything everyone has sent about said about the consent piece I just also wanted to name I think that the tension here is between like our responsibilities as a district to make sure the student is protected versus like like protecting their personal status whether they want that to be disclosed or not but then also meeting the obligation under the law to protect them if they are pregnant or have a related condition so I feel like that's the tension there of where that line is

141and that the attorneys are saying okay this is probably the best way to protect you as a district to absolutely make sure you're meeting your responsibility but we also want to make sure our students feel comfortable so maybe if the policy committee can can bridge that yeah can find the perfect solution to that that the lawyers couldn't yeah I have I have faith in the for ofie just quickly on before we I I I also think we should we should uh send it back but just on the on the the other piece that Cynthia spoke to the voluntarily agree um uh are you okay with us trying to find a way to say that another way so we don't have to say voluntarily agree because I was trying to think about what would involuntarily agreeing

142be and I couldn't I couldn't figure that out sounds like she already has some revised language that's fine yeah I think Chang it from a must to a May is that is that a simple fix well basically I think the point Cy's got some super cool language we're you guys got that covered awesome um so just before do we want to now make the motion for those ones the second read before we move on to the first read yes okay cool so uh we are going to Table Three and we're going to do a motion for consideration and approval for second read for the following policies and procedures ACAA harassment and sexual harassment of students and ACA a student discrimination and harassment complaint procedures R1 and R2 Beth thank you Kelly second any further discussion

143right all those in favor great none opposed all right so uh I will put a motion on the floor for uh consideration do we have a motion for consideration approval for first read for the following policies AC non-discrimination equal opportunity affirmative action acab harassment and sexual harassment of employees and acab the employee discrimination harassment in Title 9 sexual harassment complaint procedures revised also into two procedures R1 and R2 cheyen and Malik thank you okay so we're bringing um three and they're very related policies um I'm sorry we're bringing two policies and two procedures um to you this evening um and um let's start with AC so AC is um non-discrimination equal opportunity and affirmative action so again for all of these policies the the the sub the substantive changes are those that have been um

144that uh follow from the changes to Title 9 right so everything where all of the changes we're seeing are the um our lawyers falling uh from uh um Direction given by um the federal government on how these uh changes need to be implemented a see is just to to make clear because I think there was this was brought up in our last conversation about sort of how these different um policies sync with each other and whether or not they should have exactly the same language or not um we had a conversation about that and basically um and I believe we got notes from um our Council on that is that that the best way to understand this policy is that this is stating in the broadest possible terms what our legal responsibilities are in terms

145of non-discrimination equal opportunity and affirmative action it is not a statement of our values more broadly as a district so we just wanted to sort of clarify that that is the F that's the function of this document it is to it is to State uh it is to State our compliance with these various different regulations it is not um there's nothing else in it um that has to do with our um sort of any other values that we may practice here as a district and so we just wanted to sort of make that clear that because I think part of what also um we notice as a as a um committee but I think also may have come up in the context of the board is that there's some differences in terms and there's some

146differences in terms of um who is um like what the list of things are that um for example rc5 number five prohibits discrimination including harassment of School Employees on the basis of and then it gives a list and then RSU number five prohibits discrimination including harassment of students on the basis of another other list and those lists do not completely match and again that's not because of a value choice we have made that's because that's actually just what the law says um that it's just that's the way that again it's not that um those amalgamate the different laws that cover um that so the the big one that you may notice um is not in um discrimination or harassment of students is there is not information there uh we do not explicitly State the protection

147um of genetic information um and that's just because that does not exist in federal uh legal language is that correct Cynthia law appes and the law applies for 40 and over thank you so again it's not to say that because that is that's missing um we're giving our administrators and teachers permission to discriminate on the basis of genetic information it's just that from just very technically from a legal perspective we can't like we we do not have that obligation and I think part of probably why that is not included is because it's not a situation as as I was able to understand it where the school would have would have access to that information in the same way that EMP an employer might but again that's not that's not my expert opinion but that's my

148understanding of that can you give us an example of what genetic information is um we did look at that but I'm trying to now think of so so a medical test yeah I think it would it would be any it would be anything that the school that the the school as an employer has access to from a medical record or sort of or sort of related to that that biometric screening where you're they told you your straw was too high I guess they harassed you I guess so but in a hereditary way maybe Danielle can Danielle's just rolling her eyes at all of our ridiculous ability to understand how medicine and the human body works so step in here whenever you you can Danielle and make sure we're not sounding like complete morons we always

149seem to get into these strange questions last time we were here we talked about turtles just saying that was a really good conversation um so again the the changes here um uh unless Daniel you do want to step in and correct everything that I've said this incorrect um the changes that have been made here just reflect again how we can make sure that we're in compliance with um with Title Nine uh any questions about AC or clarifications from Daniel George the board member from Durham okay um the next one we um we looked at is harassment of employees so again um there you'll see a lot you'll see a lot of similarities between um acab and ACAA ACAA was harassment and sexual harassment of students acab is harassment and sexual harassment of employees um so

150again the the the the the spirit and the letter of the changes that have that have been made are the same sorts of changes that uh that um were made to um ACAA again based on the title 9 UM requirements we did just want to know um that uh this policy does cover um harassment of employees um by uh by either other employees or um other um uh let's say adults in the in in the educational context but it also covers um student harassment of employees as well so that is also covered in this uh this policy but again otherwise I'm not going to walk through any of the fine points because again the substance of it Remains the Same as it was before except for the changes to Title 9 UM and then the

151two um the two procedures again um have been broken out to cover um let me just make sure I have the language Moon you're going to go home and just say it was just so such an interesting meeting I just learned so much and uh we should make the student reps watch a meeting before they volunteer exactly do you really we actually should make all board members watch everyone run mostly just watch the parts where I'm talking too much um so the um so acab R1 is employee discrimination and harassment complaint procedure and then um acbr R2 um is employees sex discrimination harassment complaint procedure so again um it's a um breaking apart of those two um procedures um which just again functionally um uh makes things a lot easier for um I guess in

152this situation it really is Cynthia to be able to follow the proper uh the proper procedure um and for whether it's a harassment or whether it's uh uh sexual harassment and I believe we caught the various offense and various things and have already made those changes cuz those existed here as well CU they came from the same source so do do I so AC is kind of the overarching that so that's just the the the the top policy and from that comes ACAA and acab for students and employees is that a fair way to look at it uh yeah I think that's that's a nice way of saying it thank you for saying it so simply see that one sentence I'm known for being concise yeah right there are two Blackhawk 1.5 ton underlift track

153stands still available all right so uh any questions so these ones are here for first read any questions um I think as Colin said these are very similar to the to the uh the batch that we just approved for second read on the students um I appreciate the designation that this also cover sort of upward from students to employees that's helpful to know that there's policy in place for that hopefully we don't need it hopefully we don't need any of these but yeah um Cara and Candy was there anything else from that meeting that I miss in terms of our conversation around around this all right any questions before we make a vote on a first read for these policies two two policies and two uh procedures great we have a first we have a

154second all those in favor great none opposed thank [Music] you uh we have no unfinished business nor new business it always seems weird like why are we having a meeting if we have no unfinished or new business I feel like we've done a lot of business anyway no Personnel I don't think we have any public comment but I will pause sorry can I just add something there I did get a text from a from a uh while during the meeting from a parent who's uh only now learning about the chocolate milk thing oh um so you know just be warned may come back again so I was I had a conversation with someone um over the weekend and their uh father used to be on the Freeport school council and his big claim to fame

155was he was the big Pusher to get soda out of the schools I was like well you can tell him that we've officially gotten the chocolate milk out too which has just as much sugar as the soda Moon ask uh why was chocolate milk removed I was really sad this year I was just like yeah it's it's because chocolate is chocolate is evil excited just like that chocolate milk out so you gone you'll be happy to know that I believe there will be chocolate milk on special occasions I don't know what designates a special occasion but uh it was really based on um the amount of sugar it you know when we're trying to limit the the UN the added sugar to things it was a fair amount of added sugar and there's also a

156new law from the federal government that's coming into play is it it isn't in effect now but it will be within the next year I think based on what we heard from our nutrition director um and our current chocolate milk would no longer be in compliance anyway so it was it was short for this life anyway um so but I would I would just say to Moon that that they are looking at a new formula to limit the sugar I mean no one's getting the skin milk or like any no one's getting the skin milk who drinks skim milk uh yeah it's probably limiting the amount of milk in general that's being sold but Beth oh col just said what I was say oh that they're they're gonna have a new version yeah can I

157add that it's oakst if if the student body would like to Lobby oakar to create a chocolate milk that would fall within the federal nutrition guidelin then we could potentially have chocolate milk back this was recently in a fifth grade newsletter at Mass laning about the chocolate milk and the person who wrote that said that the Schoolboard made the decision and so I I did ask my son if I could write a letter to the editor to clarify that want a full retraction H chocolate milk got to love it um Okay so so uh can we now take a motion to adjourn will would like to close up his school uh Beth thank you Kelly all those in favor have a great night